


Slipping Away

by the_random_writer



Category: Cut & Run - Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
Genre: Bathtubs, Domestic Fluff, Gen, Minor Injuries, Snark, Stupidity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-08 05:41:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11640084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_random_writer/pseuds/the_random_writer
Summary: Zane is in trouble, only Ty can save him now...





	Slipping Away

So this was it.

This was how he would meet his end.

All the bullets and bombs he'd somehow avoided, all the binges and benders he'd somehow survived, and this was how he would finally go. Alone in the dark, slowly but surely slipping away, succumbing to the pain and the cold.

Was this _really_ the best the Gods could do?

If only he could contact Ty, talk to him one final time, hear his husband of almost four years tell him he loved him again and again while he waited for the scythe to fall. But Ty wasn't here, and his phone—his only link to the rest of the world—was somewhere in the room next door.

In his current predicament, it might as well have been on the moon.

He'd always known he would die alone, surrounded by his thoughts and regrets, but he'd never once in his life imagined he would die as pointlessly as this.

He grunted in pain as another spasm racked his aching, battered back. The seizures were coming more frequently now—another ominous indication that his candle was reaching the end of the wick.

He tried to relax, to allow the cold and silence to claim him, to quietly slide into the void.

He couldn't do it.

He still had too much life to live, and more importantly, far too much love to give. He couldn't turn the volume down, surrender and just drift away.

_You can't cheat, death, Garrett. It's gonna happen eventually, whether you're ready for it or not, but it doesn't have to happen today. You've got at least another twenty years of living and loving in you, so get your goddamn shit together and find a way out of this mess._

He drew in a breath, bracing against the pain to come, then dragged his foot up under his thigh and pressed down as hard as he could, trying to lever himself out of the tiny space.

For a few, fleeting, joyous moments, he actually thought he was going to succeed, until his foot abruptly skidded away, failing to find the purchase it needed on the slippery surface underneath.

He fell with an ungainly thud, crying out as a bolt of pain shot up his wounded spine.

Back to square one. Back to contemplating the end and staring the Reaper in the face.

Ty would eventually find him, of this he was absolutely sure, but this was one of those situations where 'eventually' wasn't quite good enough. He needed help, and he needed it now.

Another convulsion, this one longer and stronger than before. He gritted his teeth, held his breath and waited for the torment to pass. What felt like twenty minutes later, the seizure finally faded away, leaving him panting, exhausted, dripping in sweat and silently begging to be saved.

He couldn’t take much more of this.

Groaning softly, he closed his eyes, leaned against the slope behind him and forced his muscles to relax. He wasn't ready to give up yet, but he needed some time to summon the energy for another attempt to struggle free. The next attempt would be his fifth, and given his diminishing physical condition, very probably his last.

He jerked as he heard a disturbance below—a door slamming against a wall, a gun being cocked, then angry but determined steps. He was so relieved he almost sobbed. The cavalry was about to arrive, and the man on the charger could only be Ty.

"Zane!" he heard his husband shout, the loveliest and most welcome of sounds. "I've been calling you for the last half hour! Where the fuck are you?" There was fear and panic in Grady's voice.

"I'm up here!" Zane shouted back, struggling to keep his emotions in check. "Get me the fuck out of here!"

Ty thundered up the stairs, taking them two or three at a time. A few seconds later, the ex-marine burst into the room, a look of concern on his handsome face, then stopped totally dead in his tracks.

"Are you shitting me, Garrett?" Ty exclaimed as he reset his gun and stuck it back in his belt. "I just hustled five customers out of the store and practically _sprinted_ the six blocks home, because I had somehow gotten it into my head that you'd fallen over and knocked yourself out, and you're taking a fucking _bath_?" He finally noticed something was wrong. "Where the fuck is the water? Why the hell are you lying in an empty bathtub with no clothes on? Is this some kinky sex thing I don't know about? Did Nick put you up to this? What the fuck is going on?" he almost roared.

Zane shook his head. "It's not a sex thing, and nobody put me up to this," he explained, trying not to shout back. "I threw my back out moving a bunch of boxes around in the garage, and I thought a jacuzzi bath would help," he said, gesturing at the now silent jets.

Ty backed off, but only slightly. "So where's the actual bath?" he asked, flapping his arms in indignation.

"Down the drain. I emptied it out an hour ago."

"So why the fuck are you still lying in it?"

"Because I can't fucking get out!"

Ty gave him a disgusted look, like he'd accidentally caught a whiff of the world's stinkiest and most rancid fart. "The fuck do you mean, you can't get out?"

Zane sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He was never, _ever_ going to live this down. "I thought some bubble bath would help," he explained, gesturing at the plastic bottle sitting on the edge of the sink.

Ty's mouth fell slightly open as he realized what the Texan had done. "Oh, babe," he murmured in a fearful tone. "That's not bubble bath. That's concentrated massage oil."

"A fact of which I am now painfully and distressingly aware," Zane sniped.

"How much did you use?"

"The rest of the bottle."

Ty slapped a hand across his mouth, trying and failing to smother an outrageously indelicate snort.

"I'm glad you think this is funny," Zane said to his spouse. "I've been sitting in this bath for almost an hour, having spasms from hell every five or ten minutes. It's like someone made a tiny, personal torture chamber out of a slip 'n slide."

Ty's shoulders were shaking now.

"Stop laughing and get me out of this thing!"

The ex-marine nodded, quickly wiped at his left eye, then cleared his throat and wiggled his jaw, struggling not to giggle again. But instead of approaching to lend a hand, he took his iPhone out of his pocket and held it up in front of his face.

"The fuck are you doing?" Zane asked, not even remotely impressed.

"What do you think I'm doing?" Ty retorted. "I'm taking a photo of you stuck in a bath and slathered in massage oil. Say cheese," he ordered with a grin. The flash of the camera briefly filled the room.

"Put that goddamn phone away, before I take it off you and shove it up your no-good, insolent, useless ass."

Ty responded with a snort. "You got a cheek calling me useless, considering you can't even climb out of a goddamn bath."

"Have _you_ ever tried to climb out of an extra-deep, extra-long jacuzzi bath that's totally coated in massage oil while your back muscles are trying to show you what childbirth feels like?"

"You're assuming I'd be dumb enough to put that much massage oil in a bath in the first place."

Now it was Zane's turn to snort. "Says the man who's so fucking dumb he has to stand on a chair to raise his IQ."

"Fuck you, Garrett. We all know the smartest thing that's ever come out of your mouth is my dick."

Zane snickered, then groaned as his back convulsed again.

The joking stopped and Ty was instantly at his side. "Okay, babe, let's get you out of here and onto the bed before you rupture something or pass out." He frowned and stuck his hands on his hips. "Just need to figure out the best way to do this."

"What the hell's to figure out?" Zane griped. "Give me your hand and pull me up."

Ty shook his head. "You're heavier and taller than me, you've got absolutely zero traction, and I have nothing to brace against with my other arm. I do that, you'll end up pulling me in on top."

"Okay, but whatever solution you're gonna come up with, can you come up with it quickly?" Zane pleaded. "I haven't been able to feel my butt for the last twenty minutes, and I'm so cold my balls have migrated into my lungs."

"Don't worry, babe," Ty said, grinning again. "I'll give everything a nice, warm massage later, coax the whole lot back to life in no time at all."

"Just don't use any more of the oil."

"We _could_ fill the bath up again, pour in some cleaning detergent," Ty suggested. "Won't do your skin any good, but it should get rid of the worst of the oil."

"Tried that already. Used all the hot water and most of the soap, didn't even put a dent in it."

Ty snorted. "Should buy a bottle to keep in the garage. Stuff probably does a better job on hinges and wheel nuts than WD40."

He smiled in a way that told Zane he'd just had an astounding thought. "Just thought of something," the ex-marine said, then turned to stride out of the room. "Back in a sec."

He returned a couple of minutes later, carrying a familiar-looking rubber mat.

"Is that one of the car mats?" Zane asked.

Ty nodded and leaned over to drop the mat into the bath. "Put that under your feet," he said. "It's supposed to be non-slip, so it should stick to the bottom pretty good, even with all the oil. See if you can at least get enough traction to push yourself up onto the ledge behind you."

Zane did as he was told.

The mat slipped a couple of inches, threatening to slither away, then changed its mind and held firm, living up to its manufacturer's claims.

Slowly but surely, Zane pushed himself up the back slope of the bath, grimacing and wincing all the way. This had to be the least dignified, most embarrassing, most middle-aged injury he'd ever sustained.

He eventually made it up onto the ledge. He relaxed against the wall behind him and murmured a quick prayer of thanks.

"Don't move," Ty commanded, kneeling down to adjust the position of the mat. When he was finally happy with the arrangement, he stood up and held out his right hand. "Grab me around the forearm, I'm gonna count to three. On three, I'll pull you towards me, you push yourself away from the wall. Don't move your feet, and keep them on the mat. You lose the mat, you're going down, and _not_ in a good way. Ready?"

Zane nodded.

"Okay, let's do this," Ty started. "One… two…"

Zane held up a protesting hand.

"What?"

"Are we doing this _on_ three, or _after_ three?"

Ty huffed and rolled his eyes. "Did you miss the bit where I said _on_ three?"

"Okay, okay, sorry, don't get your panties in a bunch. On three."

"Ready?"

Zane nodded again.

"One… two… three…"

Ty pulled and Zane pushed as hard and as smoothly as they could.

For a couple of seconds, it looked as if it was going to work.

Until the Car Mat of Satan decided it had a better idea. It let out a squeak, slipped slightly, held for a moment, then slipped again, flying to the end of the bath.

Zane's feet went with the mat; his body went the other way. He pitched backwards, arms flailing, grabbing at something to slow his fall, but the only 'something' he could find was Ty.

And that was how they both figured out that even if God was a mathematician, the Laws of Physics were very much the Devil's work. Zane landed on his ass with a thud, pulling his lighter and shorter husband down into the bathtub with him. Which would have been fine, had Ty not smacked his head on the built-in soap shelf on the way down.

Zane heard two cracks—one from the surface underneath him, one from his husband's head—equally and alarmingly loud. Ty collapsed on top of him, out like the proverbial light, as heavy as the proverbial stone.

Jesus fucking Christ. Could this evening _seriously_ get any worse?

What the fuck had either of them ever done to deserve this? Was it payback for the people they'd killed while working for the FBI? Had one of them been Lizzie Borden or Jack the Ripper in a previous life?

He was never, _ever_ taking a bath again. Or, for that matter, taking a shower armed with anything less than a hazmat suit, an AR-15 and a fully-equipped apocalypse survival pack.

He gritted his teeth as his back muscles quivered again, and waited for the spasm to pass. But this time, it didn't fade. In another, epic moment of 'fuck you' non-cooperation, his battered, abused, middle-aged body stayed completely and totally cramped.

Zane whimpered quietly. He knew from prior experience that only an injection of muscle relaxant would now chase the seizure away.

They needed help. Both of them, and right now. A muscle strain was bad enough, but a blow to the front of the head was even less of a laughing matter.

"Please, please, _please_ tell me you didn't leave your phone downstairs when you went to fetch the mat," he murmured to his unconscious, human blanket spouse.

When he found the phone in Ty's jacket pocket, fully charged, unlocked and completely unharmed by the fall, he was so relieved he actually cried.

But now he had another, even more pressing problem.

Who on God's green and pleasant Earth should he call?


End file.
